The Right Digital Camera for the Holidays

The Right Digital Camera for the Holidays

Which is the right digital camera for the holidays? This is the question. And I went looking for the answer. And for me, it seems that the answer is the Canon PowerShot A520.

The first question that I asked was, do I want a digital camera? I asked my wife if we were ready to go digital, and she said, "No." So, of course, I am getting a digital camera. All the cool kids have one.

As I was going along the buying a digital camera path, I had to answer the No. 1 question, which was: What do I want my digital camera to do? The answer for me is that I want it to replace my film point-and-shoot that I bought for $80 about three years ago.

Really, what I want is point-and-shoot capability. I want to be able to dump photos, which would be nice because my youngest, who is 5 years old, loves to take pictures but is not very good at it. Stinks, really.

So, how many megapixels do I want? You would think this would be an easy question to answer, but it's not. The bottom line is, you want at least 3.2 megapixels, but 4.0 is probably a lot better. But, any more than that (and that means 5.0 and more), and you start getting a diminishing return that hurts you in the fact that it takes more space to store all of your pixels. Most of the photos I am going to take will have a minimum of editing and cropping. So, bottom line, it seems, is that 4.0 is the best bet for me.

Wow. That really narrows down the whole digital camera game. Now, question No. 2: How much do I want to spend?

Here the answer is sort of tricky as well. I want to spend the least amount of money to get a pretty dang good 4.0 megapixel digital camera that I'll be happy with. OK. That really doesn't narrow it down all that much.

So, we do a little more research.

On Shopping.com, I am able to limit my list results to digitals cameras with at least 4.0 megapixels. Then I sort by price. I get 600 results starting at $99. So I know that I am probably going to spend at least, say, $120 or so. So, 600 results.

Let's get cracking on that research.

One of the best starting points for a free consumer-research website is http://www.consumersearch.com/ This site compiles the results of other websites that do research, and presents it into one neat package. The quick and easy
answer is that the top two sites like the PowerShot A520.

http://www.dcresource.com/buyersguide/index.shtml
http://www.imaging-resource.com/WB/WB.HTM?view=4#davecams

The PCWorld.com list of the best point-and-shoot doesn't include the A520, but does have it's A510 3.2-megapixel little brother. The other cameras on the list cost more than I want to spend.

So, that's it. I am going with the A520. And there we are.